Author: Katherine Rose

The filing period opened earlier this week to run for local office in Sitka. On Tuesday, Assembly member Kevin Mosher filed to run for reelection. KCAW’s Katherine Rose spoke with Mosher about his last two terms and what his goals are, should he be re-elected for a third.

Sitka’s airport improvement project is slightly ahead of schedule and on budget. That’s according to airport terminal manager Joseph Bea, who shared an update on the project with the Sitka Assembly on July 9. Bea said they’ve spent around $4 million so far, around one third of the money needed to complete the first phase of the project. That includes the purchase of Sitka’s only escalator. 

Voters could see two propositions to update the city’s charter on the municipal election ballot this October. At its regular meeting on July 9, the assembly approved the draft propositions on first reading. But a third, dealing with how funds from the former Sitka Community Hospital fund should be spent, failed to gain the assembly’s support.

When the Sitka Assembly meets tonight, it will discuss adopting an “action plan” to enact recent recommendations from its tourism task force.

A third proposed ballot initiative to limit cruise traffic in Sitka was denied by the city on Tuesday (7-2-24).

Last month, the Sitka Assembly approved a resolution backing a fisheries policy to limit trawler bycatch in the Bering sea. But when the group was asked to take their support a step further, it paused.

Last month, the assembly adopted a list of directives from the Tourism Task Force. When the assembly meets tonight (6-25-24), it will discuss how to move forward in tackling some of those recommendations.

Last fall, a group of Sitkans tried twice to get an ordinance to limit cruise traffic to 240,000 visitors annually before voters. Both failed to make it beyond the city’s legal review process. Since then the group has organized into a nonprofit, Small Town SOUL. On June 18, they submitted their third petition with a higher cruise visitor limit –300,000 passengers annually, with a daily limit of 4500 passengers, starting in the 2025 cruise season.